I am making the commitment. I will put that in writing to the Member that the Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority will transfer that money to the community government of Fort McPherson to do their own wellness and community mental health and wellness work.
Mr. Chairman, I agree with the Member to a certain extent; that there is not enough flexibility in the way we deliver mental health and addiction services. There is a need for people with specific qualifications including master’s program, where necessary. The way that the programs are delivered now, there’s not enough flexibility. Flexibility to hire somebody without a master’s program would be helpful to the community. This is why I like the idea when Beaufort-Delta Health and Social Services Authority as well as the acting deputy minister suggested to me that we could work to transfer that money to the community governments so that they could hire their own person and they don’t have to require somebody to have a master’s education.
Now, we do have those people in place if the community needs that. But I have heard also from the community of Fort McPherson that they would like to be able to have some options to provide community healing and wellness programming. We are saying we will do that. We are doing exactly what the Member is saying, that the communities should have more say on how this program is being delivered.
On a larger picture I want to advise the Member in the House that the Minister’s action plan that I was talking about will address -- and we will have an opportunity to talk about this -- about how we could revisit mental health and addictions programming and how we could address enhancing some of the services in communities that are not as available under the ISDM model, because it’s a very clearly designed program and we want to do ISDM-plus under that Minister’s action plan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.